LeO scraps mediation proposals

The Legal Ombudsman (LeO) has decided not to pursue mediation as a method of dispute resolution after a trial revealed minimal uptake of the scheme.

In a report to its oversight body, the Office for Legal Complaints, the LeO revealed last month that just 10% of service providers contacted showed an interest in mediation, and of those that did, often the customer would not want to participate.

Just 8% of cases ended up in both parties being willing to participate and, according to the report, just half of those were resolved successfully.

The report explained that to offer the telephone-based mediation service, the LeO would require a minimum of two full-time administrators and the equivalent of 1.5 mediators. It estimated that this would result in a maximum of 24 files per month being resolved ahead of a full investigation.

“The resource requirement exceeds the costs of employing investigators to resolve an equivalent number of cases per month”, it concluded.

“Furthermore, the time taken to contact parties and attempt to arrange mediation increases the customer journey in the cases that do not successfully mediate.”

Speaking to chief ombudsman Rebecca Marsh (pictured) in June, Solicitors Journal was told that the complaints handler was looking to streamline the resolution process.

“The key is that no-one should be waiting at any point in the process, and we have taken out most of our points of waiting, except one, which is right at the beginning of the process”, she said.

She implied that greater communication between parties would be key to the ombudsman’s strategy going forward. “As the benefits of modernisation come out and as the work that we are doing this year to further staff development and training starts to bite, that focus and communication will really drive things more efficiently”, she said.

As a subscriber you can read the interview in full here: Learning from complaints